Ethylene oxide custody transfer metering project

A recent project for a major oil and gas operator investigated physical properties and flow measurement issues associated with metering a volatile chemical most often used as an intermediate in the production of industrial chemicals.

“The client wanted to build an ethylene oxide metering skid with custody transfer metering accuracy,” says Senior Flow Consultant, Konrad Kuczynski. “This was an interesting project for us as it is unusual to want to apply custody transfer rules to this chemical which is flammable, highly reactive and poisonous. Issues of safety were therefore of paramount importance, alongside accuracy and cost-effectiveness.”

“We provided a basic engineering study,” Konrad explains, “advising the client on how to operate a metering station for this type of fluid safely. We also provided details of the required metering process to ensure it would operate effectively.

As well as advising on the metering options available, Konrad and his team explained the relative merits of each, as well as giving ways to maintain high quality metering over time and across a range of operational situations.

“From an operational point of view, it was important for the system to be as simple as possible to set up and operate,” Konrad adds. “One critical safety factor was minimizing the potential for leaks to occur. We also modelled the behavior of the chemical using our PPDS software package (Physical Property Data Services) to ensure that there would be no change of phase within the system.”

The PPDS suite of software packages and databases provides quality-assured physical properties of fluid data (numeric values with associated uncertainties) on more than 1,500 single chemical components for a wide range of process engineering applications from downstream to upstream oil and gas industry.